The world has been divided into two groups, pats and quads, but they are far from equal. Carrying gas masks and cannisters, the pats may kill the quads, who are marked by maimed thumbs and brands on their faces. Using lyrical, rhythmic prose to tell intertwined tales of this brutal dystopian culture, Jesse Ball follows teenage pats Lethe and Lois as they learn how their people justify violence and documents the uncertainty of a pat woman who shares her heartache with her husband, while a quad boy who has avoided being branded finds that he is nonetheless in danger.

"Mesmerizing.... Ball delivers a strident condemnation of inequality in an imagined nation.... The novel's depiction of life in this dystopian world is eerie and suffused with symbolic weight."—Publishers Weekly